The complex relationship between Islamism and democracy

Last week’s murder of over twenty Shia Muslims and a brazen Taliban attack on a military base are just the latest cases in Pakistan’s litany of religious violence. Unsurprisingly, the country is often cited as a worst-case example of the role political Islam can play in fostering extremism. But it is notable that no Islamist party in Pakistan has even come close to winning the country’s national elections. In fact, the intensification of violent activity by the country’s Islamist groups does not represent the triumph of political Islam, but its failure.

Pakistan’s flawed democratic processes and fractured religious groupings have prevented the electoral success of dominant, moderate religious parties who are capable of channeling religion in legitimate and non-violent ways. Instead, the country has been wracked by a competitive, often violent, street sectarianism. Unable to succeed at the ballot box, fragmented groups have sought, in vain, to impose their own narrow vision of Islam on the state by attacking minorities, taking up arms or threatening rivals in street demonstrations - challenging the writ of the state rather than working within its political framework.

Islamism’s first major advocate was Abdul A’la Maududi, a journalist and religious propagandist born in 1903 in Aurangabad, in then undivided India. In the crucible of the independence movement, Maududi rejected the idea of Pakistan, because it was led by secular, Westernised politicians like Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Instead, he insisted that Muslims should live in a society governed by religious law, from which all non-Islamic elements were purged. Despite his early disapproval of the formation of the new nation, he moved to Pakistan in 1947, and spent the rest of his life fighting for a constitution based on a rigid interpretation of the shari’a and freedom from materialistic Western influences, including freedom from liberal democracy. He argued instead for “theo-democracy”, a rule of the religious.

Largely due to its focus on the distinction between Islam and Western “godless” systems, Maududi’s brand of Islamism became a popular model for revolutionaries in post-colonial states, where predominantly Muslim populations were governed by autocratic, notionally secular rulers backed by the West. In countries as diverse as Iran, Turkey and Egypt, Muslims were told that their religion was not compatible with politics, whether autocratic or democratic.

Yet, since the late 1970s, in many of these Muslim-majority states, elite groups arguing for secularism have been swept aside by people’s movements advocating the centrality of Islam as a political ideology. In none of these developments—revolutionary and democratic—did Islamism emerge as a top-down system.

In Turkey, the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.) emerged from a process of ‘Reformation’ in rural Anatolia, linked to the grass-roots influence of an authoritative Sufi order, the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood learned early that to succeed it had to evolve from an anti-democratic, revolutionary group to become an institutionalised political actor. Although its earlier ideologues rejected multi-party pluralism, the Muslim Brotherhood now seems committed to it, both in theory and practice. The slogan that has caused much disquiet in the Western media—“al-Islam huwa al-Hall” (“Islam is the solution”)—was originally coined as an electoral slogan. Even in Iran, the revolutionary leadership managed to harness genuine popular support in the 1970s (and arguably continues to do so) based on its religious authority, spreading the message of Ayatollah Khomeini. In these countries, deep social changes found expression in Islamist political movements that overwhelmed non-democratic forces.

In Pakistan however, Islamism did not take root. Muslims are more profoundly divided in Pakistan by sectarian, linguistic and ethnic affiliations. As a result, although Islamist parties have contested every national election in Pakistan’s history, they have never won a significant proportion of the votes. The entrenched power structures and material attractions of secular parties have consistently trumped calls to impose the shari’a. When, in 2002, a coalition of Islamist parties formed the provincial government of the North West Frontier Province, it collapsed within three years as Deobandi, Barelwi, and Shia factions argued about how to implement Islamic government.

It is notable that Pakistani Islamists parties have only enjoyed widespread support when they have joined pro-democracy movements. In the 1980s, for example, Maududi’s party, the Jamaat-I Islami, joined Benazir Bhutto in her fight against dictatorship and, more recently, members of the Jamaat have joined Imran Khan’s Movement for Justice (PTI), which seeks to purge Pakistan of its habitually corrupt politicians. This blend of populism and Islamism shows that violence is not inbuilt in the DNA of Islamists – rather, successful Islamism relies on the ability to address popular grass-roots concerns, not to coerce populations.

Instead of fearing moderate Islamism, it should be seen as a means of institutionalising religious conservatism. It may not be the outcome that liberals want, but in democracies as disparate as Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia politics have come to be dominated by parties who blend religion with an economic right-of-centre platform. The popularity and electoral success of parties such as Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Indonesia’s Golkar-led coalition and Malaysia’s United Malays National Organisation are all evidence of this trend. The increasing popularity of Imran Khan’s religiously conservative PTI suggests that Pakistan is following a similar trajectory.

Daniel Jacobius Morgan is a Researcher at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. He is currently working on an M.Phil in South Asian Studies at Oxford University

The Autumn Statement proved it – we need a real alternative to austerity, now

After six wasted years of failed Conservative austerity measures, Philip Hammond had the opportunity last month in the Autumn Statement to change course and put in place the economic policies that would deliver greater prosperity, and make sure it was fairly shared.

Instead, he chose to continue with cuts to public services and in-work benefits while failing to deliver the scale of investment needed to secure future prosperity. The sense of betrayal is palpable.

The headline figures are grim. An analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that real wages will not recover their 2008 levels even after 2020. The Tories are overseeing a lost decade in earnings that is, in the words Paul Johnson, the director of the IFS, “dreadful” and unprecedented in modern British history.

Meanwhile, the Treasury’s own analysis shows the cuts falling hardest on the poorest 30 per cent of the population. The Office for Budget Responsibility has reported that it expects a £122bn worsening in the public finances over the next five years. Of this, less than half – £59bn – is due to the Tories’ shambolic handling of Brexit. Most of the rest is thanks to their mishandling of the domestic economy.

Time to invest

The Tories may think that those people who are “just about managing” are an electoral demographic, but for Labour they are our friends, neighbours and the people we represent. People in all walks of life needed something better from this government, but the Autumn Statement was a betrayal of the hopes that they tried to raise beforehand.

Because the Tories cut when they should have invested, we now have a fundamentally weak economy that is unprepared for the challenges of Brexit. Low investment has meant that instead of installing new machinery, or building the new infrastructure that would support productive high-wage jobs, we have an economy that is more and more dependent on low-productivity, low-paid work. Every hour worked in the US, Germany or France produces on average a third more than an hour of work here.

Labour has different priorities. We will deliver the necessary investment in infrastructure and research funding, and back it up with an industrial strategy that can sustain well-paid, secure jobs in the industries of the future such as renewables. We will fight for Britain’s continued tariff-free access to the single market. We will reverse the tax giveaways to the mega-rich and the giant companies, instead using the money to make sure the NHS and our education system are properly funded. In 2020 we will introduce a real living wage, expected to be £10 an hour, to make sure every job pays a wage you can actually live on. And we will rebuild and transform our economy so no one and no community is left behind.

May’s missing alternative

This week, the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, gave an important speech in which he hit the proverbial nail on the head. He was completely right to point out that societies need to redistribute the gains from trade and technology, and to educate and empower their citizens. We are going through a lost decade of earnings growth, as Carney highlights, and the crisis of productivity will not be solved without major government investment, backed up by an industrial strategy that can deliver growth.

Labour in government is committed to tackling the challenges of rising inequality, low wage growth, and driving up Britain’s productivity growth. But it is becoming clearer each day since Theresa May became Prime Minister that she, like her predecessor, has no credible solutions to the challenges our economy faces.

Crisis in Italy

The Italian people have decisively rejected the changes to their constitution proposed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, with nearly 60 per cent voting No. The Italian economy has not grown for close to two decades. A succession of governments has attempted to introduce free-market policies, including slashing pensions and undermining rights at work, but these have had little impact.

Renzi wanted extra powers to push through more free-market reforms, but he has now resigned after encountering opposition from across the Italian political spectrum. The absence of growth has left Italian banks with €360bn of loans that are not being repaid. Usually, these debts would be written off, but Italian banks lack the reserves to be able to absorb the losses. They need outside assistance to survive.

Bail in or bail out

The oldest bank in the world, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, needs €5bn before the end of the year if it is to avoid collapse. Renzi had arranged a financing deal but this is now under threat. Under new EU rules, governments are not allowed to bail out banks, like in the 2008 crisis. This is intended to protect taxpayers. Instead, bank investors are supposed to take a loss through a “bail-in”.

Unusually, however, Italian bank investors are not only big financial institutions such as insurance companies, but ordinary households. One-third of all Italian bank bonds are held by households, so a bail-in would hit them hard. And should Italy’s banks fail, the danger is that investors will pull money out of banks across Europe, causing further failures. British banks have been reducing their investments in Italy, but concerned UK regulators have asked recently for details of their exposure.

John McDonnell is the shadow chancellor

John McDonnell is Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington and has been shadow chancellor since September 2015.